Astrophotography With Camera Alone, Cont.

My first reaction when I got the film back from the printer was "Wow! This is great! Look at all those stars!"

Here the camera was pointed directly overhead and you see the North star as the brightest star, which is very near the center of the circles formed by the stars. I used ISO 400 film to obtain this shot.

Notice the short meteor streak in the bottom part of the photo. Meteors can be identified by the way they fade in and out as they travel. They do this because as they enter the atmosphere of the Earth, they begin to heat and glow brighter as they travel and get hotter. Then as they are burning up, they are getting smaller, and so although they are glowing very bright, they fade out until they burn all up.

This is just one of the many suprises you may find. Occasional airplanes and satellites may also make a suprising showing on your photos.

The two faint horizontal purple lines in the photo are artifacts from my scanner.

Many times, having part of the Earth as a reference enhances the look of the photo by showing the scale. Look here.